Prevalence of Dyslipidaemia using Serum and Salivary Lipids among Primary School Children aged 5 to 12 Years, in Sokoto, Nigeria

Abstract Saliva is secreted by the salivary gland, and as a screening medium, saliva offers more advantages over serum for the determination of lipid levels as documented in previous studies.Prevalence of dyslipidaemia is rising especially in the developing world, where 80% are said to be at risk for dyslipidaemia. Dyslipidaemia can be traced to childhood for any adult suffering complication from the lipid abnormality. More so, the 2011 experts on integrated guidelines for cardiovascular risk reduction on lipid screening in childhood and adolescents endorsed universal screening for all children and adolescents to identify dyslipidemia at an early age of 2 years. For children with obesity, their first cholesterol test should be by 2 years but not later than 10 years of age. In other to make this ensure compliance to this screening test, the use of serum and saliva was employed to ascertain their comparability. This influence this study on the prevalence of dyslipidaemia and sociodemographic characteristics of serum and salivary lipids among apparently healthy primary school children aged 5-12years in Sokoto, Nigeria. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of dyslipidaemia and the socio- demographic characteristics using serum and salivary lipids.Settings and Design: Descriptive and cross-sectional.Materials and Methods: A total of 200 apparently healthy primary school children aged 5-12 years. Who had no medical complaints or any major medical condition. The parameters assessed included serum and salivary; total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), high-density lipoproteins (HDL), and low-density lipoproteins (LDL). This was a descriptive study, among 200 apparently healthy primary school children aged group 5 to 12 years from 3 public schools and 2 private schools in Sokoto using a multistage sampling technique. A study proforma which was pretested in a pilot study, was used for data collection. Lipid test was done using the conventional enzymatic spectrophotometric method of analyzing lipid. p value ≤0.05 was taken as statistically significant.Statistical Methods: Results The mean age of the subjects was 8.4 (±2.29) years with a male to female ratio of 1:1.4. The prevalence of dyslipidemia among study group was 3%, 12%, 45%, and 9% for TC, TG, HDL and LDL respectively, with an overall prevalence of 57.0%, for serum fraction. The salivary fraction prevalence obtained was 20.5%, 17.5%, 76.0%, and 25.0%, for TC, TG, HDL, and LDL respectively, with an overall prevalence of 87.5% with variable statistical significance. Statistical significant findings were obtained for TC and TG, for serum lipid fractions. For salivary lipids fraction statistical significance was associated with social class and age respectively.Conclusion: Prevalence of dyslipidaemia is high using both serum and saliva Recommendation: screening for dyslipidaemia should be emphasized in primary schools to identify these at risk for dyslipidaemia at an early age.